Kit Falbo
patreon
MwN Chapter 51/91
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 14:26:05 +0000 UTCChapter fifty-one
Unknown danger. Step one, [Stride Before the Fall]. Ker-chunk. Double the pain, overlapping vision, dislocation, like a shoulder or knee, but worse, as it was different and not physical. There was no second body. The skill that worked through being silenced or crushed by authority failed, at least partially.
My skills! The Harmonies echoed, not diverged enough as two senses of self shared the internal space she was focused on. Not that [Stride] shared the same place in her that other skills with their island-like nodes existed, but she could check those ones. Normal aggravation at the intense pain rumbled through them. [Mana Rotation] was a little choppy.
If this had been too much authority crushing down, causing the skills to rupture, there would have been no escape. The increase from the crowd was there, but it was all good vibes and awe. It wasn't straining her system.
This assault was different. Getting inside someone's soul to attack it wasn’t easy. Only with effort and ingenuity did she manage to forcefully go in and break a skill. There was a reason she couldn't manipulate dead someone's recently eaten lunch or healers couldn't twist their skills to be harmful easily.
There was no jab or something new shoved into her. The water? But she hadn’t taken a drink. Could a skill poison be something coated on the glass? That was one direction her mind went.
A different egress? Adric! Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The bonds went both ways at times and that would allow access.
The dual consciousness zoomed their attention onto the primal bond. Adric was distressed because she was suffering, but he wasn't the issue.
A flicker of almost a vibrating temperature differential. After feeling The Arrow of Many Things, Harmony knew what that energy was.
Sir Maxwell’s oath. He was carrying her burden now, and through that oath, a pathway had formed. Now someone or something was getting in. As the two Harmonies sharing the space got closer, correction, not getting in, but ripping stuff out.
The light connection that would take some Authority as part of the knight's responsibilities was now a rent open inside her, with bits of chaos pulling it wider. That nasty stuff wasn’t going inside Harmony. It was acting from the Max side of his oath to her. That wider hole with contribution from chaos helped pull bits of her away, a sprinkling of energy and weight from all her skills, more authority, even a sliver of death from her class and properness of her maid profession.
The bloody thing wasn’t slowing down. It sped up and yanked stronger on her essence. To battle it she had two minds floating aimlessly inside herself while her body was locked up in a distracting amount of pain. The first Harmony pulled from [Cold Touch] sending a freezing chill through her soul hoping to slow the pulling movement.
She could feel her lips turn blue and teeth rattle, but slowing that transfer didn’t happen. It ate up the cold. The fluctuating state of chaos flickered almost like laughter as it was unaffected.
[Final Silence] To negate it, yet even that did nothing.
“Think!” She mentally yelled to herself. Two minds, even the same one should be able to do something.
[Renew Spirit] synergized with [Mend] to seal the wound. Lean into connections and synergy to bend some rules. This would be like stitching up a hole in a dress. Invisible threads started to shrink the hole along its edges.
The skill under the full direction of one of her minds slipped a little, intersecting with a flash of chaos. The half of herself that touched it screamed, and the backlash sent everything buzzing with a flash of red. The operation wasn’t successful as the loss of control let that modified technique fall into the chaos-filled connection with Max.
One of her was alright. All she needed to do was use that same technique with no mistakes. [Recall] and all the rest of her skills flickered weakly from the draining, No perfect memory to pull on. Gathering all that energy to do it again would...
“You’re thinking too much! There is only ever room for one of us to be here. Whoever this bastard is, they can choke on me.”
The wounded sense of self kicked off.
“Wait!”
There was no waiting. No, she had made a choice. There could only be one. That crashed into the contorting chaotic oath. And choke it did, as that oddly connected existence of herself from [Stride] twisted in.
Ambrosia had always said she had an oversized sense of importance. Now she put it to good use.
It filled it in, leaving an aching throbbing spot where Max’s oath was, changed now, subverted and different. All lethal enough that she felt [Stride Before the Fall] level.
Harmony drifted back into her body. Curses did it hurt. The restoration position covered her mouth enough for her to cough at the foreign substance. Bodyguards surrounded her with their weapons out, while one of them, Suze from the city guard with her messy cut hair knelt with the empty vial in her hands.
“She’s awake!” The guard yelled
If the concert hadn’t charged her up then how empty would she be feeling? All that work from those levels to her stability gnawed away at. So close to dying. Through that, she leveled again.
Choose your Class’s Sixth skill: Raise Specter - Shadowed Graves - Tortuous Wound
No Time for that. That burning oath inside her had two sides to it. Harmony pushed herself up onto shaky legs. “Something’s happened to Sir Maxwell. We have to go to him!”
“You can’t be serious.” Nick of the guild bodyguards complained.
“Whatever happened to me came through him. His oath. We have to secure him or at least figure out what happened.” Harmony clarified.
The bodyguard looked like he wanted to fight her on it. “Anyone know where Lady White’s knight is?”
Ambrosia knew. With her [organization] and [scheduling] skills she kept track of where everyone was staying. It made her painfully conflicted about not leading the charge herself. After the concert was almost as busy as all the prep beforehand.
“Go, do your things. We've got this.” It would take too long to cut the performer out of her getup anyway and Harmony was impatient to get to Max. And someone needed to watch Hyacinth who’d passed out from his end of the experience. [Familiar Bond] had him healthy, but she wouldn't wake him for this.
Ambrosia gave a low whistle. One of her Pets, the blue and white one, flew down and Landed on Harmony's head. “At least I can be with you in more than just spirit. Watch her, Mordecai.”
Max had been staying at one of his family's houses near the Dragonfly Inn, but that changed once he got the [Chaos Seed]. Fighting family expectations was hard, but why did he have to move into a brothel?
The fact that it was called the Milking Maid felt like an affront to her. Women in various states of dress moved in and out of the building. If someone had forced in they were probably subtle about it.
With the guards entering first and weapons loose there was no confusion. Nick was already talking to the unseemly man who ran the place.
“No one has come up to see Maxy, there was some screaming earlier that disturbed my girls, But his door was firmly locked and there was no response.”
“What room?” Harmony pressed, Entering the conversation.
“He is up the stairs and all the way back to the right. I'm sure he'll be up in the morning.”
Ignoring the owner, they moved. It was locked and with a nod, two bodyguards broke the door with skill-empowered strikes and it tipped in with a crash.
Papers on the floor scattered, each filled with densely packed script, a product of training scribe skills. Dim half-charged glow stones provided limited lighting, revealing toppled chairs, and more scattered papers. A shirtless slumped over Max lay in the middle of the mess. Thick goop covered him making the room smell of vanilla.
“Evolution rebirth.” One of the guards mumbled.
Despite the tossed-up room and sad state of her knight. There had been no fight or forcing Maxwell to do anything. [Keen Investigative Awareness] helped confirm he'd been locked in his room alone.
Harmony Stood over the unconscious man. To think that she’d come all this way to try to save him from whatever forces were using him to get to her. She reached out with A [Cold Touch] infused [Renew Spirit]. The shocking wake-up treatment had Max's eyes snap wide open while he inhaled a deep breath.
“What did you do!?” Harmony demanded.
Comments
Jed Wolfgang
Being Harmony is suffering.
SnuggleCat
Uh-oh, Max is in trouble
